A comprehensive review of the Nokia 6

Nokia has returned to the smartphone industry after ending its contract with Microsoft last year. Their first product is an Android smartphone with a great design along with decent hardware. Despite the performance offered might not be cup of tea for power user, the pre-order of the Nokia first Android smartphone has been skyrocketing, exceeding 1 millions order in just few days.

Nokia doesn’t return entirely on its own as the parts are manufactured and assembled by Hon Hai Precision from China and marketed, distributed by HMD founded by ex-Nokia employees. When the Nokia 6 was first released, it triggered a large hype on the smartphone community as many ex Nokia user highly anticipate its return. Here comes a question – what would be the main reason driving mass pre-orders? Let’s have a comprehensive breakdown on what the Nokia offers on their first Android smartphone.

Design

The Nokia 6 features 2 hands hold and connecting each other, symbolizes the iconic Nokia “connecting people” start up screen.

The bottom of the case comes with the model picture and specifications in detail.

The Nokia 6 has a 5.5 inches Full HD IPS display with brightness up to 450 nits that is no fuss when viewing under the sun. The lowest luminescence is at 2.3 nits which appear more darker than convetional LED display.

It has 2 speakers in total where one hides under the speakerphone on top and the other on the bottom. Accompanying speakerphone is the proximity sensor and the iconic NOKIA logo on its side.

It also comes with a 2.5D curved display that fits perfectly edge to edge and has a rather tiny bezel.

The rectangular home button appears bold with 2 Android navigation key siding left and right.

The rear panel has a matte finish offers a mesmerizing and dark visual experience.

Nokia 6 is unibodily crafted from 6000 series aluminium alloy and there is no fused parts between the device. The special aluminium alloy material provides resistance towards scratches, oxidation and rust.

The antenna bound to the top and bottom edges of the smartphone melted along the dark colour on the rear panel that is hard to distinguish from far.

The volume rocker and power button is located on the right hand side.

It also has a dual SIM slot on the left as it has been largely demanded on China market.

3.5mm audio jack on its top.

Despite USB Type C has become popular, the Nokia 6 still has the conventional microUSB port and a mono speaker unit at its side. The speaker works along with the dial speakerphone on the top that creates a rich surround audio experience.

Here are the accessories included along with Nokia 6.

Operating system experience

The Nokia 6 comes pre-loaded with Android 7 operating system that is slightly modified. Due to its locality, there is no Google Play Store or Google Services supported in this smartphone.

The modified Android OS from Nokia 6 has removed the app drawer and hence all apps is visible on the home screen. Most of the application icon is also been highlighted in blue including the settings menu.

Most menu and user interface on the Nokia 6 still stick toward original Android UI without much changes. As it is launched in China, there are certain features has been highlighted, such as fingerprint authentication to perform transaction through AliPay.

Performance

Most Android user are slightly disappointed when Nokia 6 is only powered by an entry level, mediocre Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 that is below average performance. However, navigation and operation of the Nokia 6 has been pretty much smooth as no CPU demanding application is running on the background.

On a side note, the Snapdragon 430 supports 4G Cat 4 LTE and support up to 800Mhz LPDDR3 RAM and eMMC3.1 flash storage. The Nokia 6 also comes with 4GB RAM and 64GB and support microSD storage expansion up to 128GB. Let’s have a quick view on its benchmark result from Antutu

The Snapdragon 430 on the Nokia 6 has a comparative performance with Helio P10 from Meizu Meilan Note 5 as its GPU renders offers higher score but slacking off on its CPU and UX benchmark scores.

In contrast with Helio P10, single core performance on the Snapdragon 430 is mediocre but its multicore score is higher than Helio P10, Snapdragon 801 and Snapdragon 805.

The GFXBench 4 GPU benchmark result shows a better score than its Helio P10 competitor. However, the performance of Nokia 6 can only be categorized within entry level smartphones.

Nokia 6 also offers faster read write speed in general when compared to other entry level smartphone such as the Meizu meilan X and meilan Note 5.

Let’s put the CPU and GPU under real life gaming test

Its GPU still did a fairly good job when rendering graphics in real time and there is no lag experienced during intensive gameplay. Hence, we can confirmed that there should be no big issue when putting Nokia 6 into games.

Battery

The Nokia 6 has a 3000mAh battery which can be charged with the original adapter with 5V/2A output. Our test result shows that the battery is increasing in a near constant rate most of the time and 68% of the battery can be recovered in just 1 hour. A full charge of the 3000mAh takes 2 hour to complete.

With more smartphone supporting quickcharging technology, this charging power input is slighted dated behind today’s technology. During charging, the smartphone temperature remains mostly at 25℃ with insignificant fluctuation. The battery consumption on the Nokia 6 is also well controlled with not much battery drain reported during our test.

Camera

The Nokia 6 has a clean camera user interface that is easy to navigate with. It supports multiple shooting mode includes panorama with settings can be adjusted on button located on the top left. However, it doesn’t include professional camera mode as in Windows Phone but its camera does its job well, that is capturing image with no fuss.

Zooming 100% into the object

HDR on (top) and off (bottom)

The 16MP rear camera does a decent job in capturing in the dark with little noise present on the image. Details still can be captured despite insufficient lighting and this camera performance is far more beyond average than other entry level smartphones.

Conclusion

In short, the Nokia 6 has returned to the smartphone market with a quality smartphone, despite its processor and performance fall short. The 6000 series aluminium alloy gives a strong build to its exterior and its design fits in modern industry standard. Would you give it a try when it is launched in Malaysia?

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Zing Gadget is a leading Technology media in Malaysia that distributes up-to-date news and tech reviews from around the world with easy and fun information. Its goal is to become a major technology media in Malaysia with good reputation in producing quality and valuable content.